New judge on “American Idol“, Ellen DeGeneres, is embroiled in a scandalous flouting of music copyright laws by her Warner Bros. Television TV talk show, “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” producers, Telepictures Productions, failure to pay for licenses for the music played on the show. When asked why they hadn’t obtained licenses to use the songs, DeGeneres’s producers, in a shocking statement, said they didn’t “roll that way.”

The world’s biggest record labels filed a lawsuit last Wednesday in the U.S. District Court in Nashville, claiming Ellen’s show played a staggering 1,000-plus songs without permission, including some of the most popular songs of the day, which the record labels don’t license for daytime television at any price. Songs cited in the suit include Michael Jackson’s “Thriller“; The Beach Boys‘ “Good Vibrations,” and Will Smith’s “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It.” Recording companies in the lawsuit include Arista Music, Atlantic Recording Corp., Capitol Records, Motown Record Company, Sony Music Entertainment, Virgin Records America, and Warner Bros. Records.

The lawsuit, which has no specified dollar amount being sought in damages, states:

“As sophisticated consumers of music, Defendants knew full well that, regardless of the way they rolled, under the Copyright Act, and under state law for the pre-1972 recordings, they needed a license to use the sound recordings lawfully.”

Digital Cheeseburger is aghast. Although distanced, technically-speaking, from the lawsuit, Ellen DeGeneres, at the very least must have loud, discordant twangs of profound embarrassment over becoming an “American Idol” judge, whose only connection to the music industry is through a massive lawsuit filed by major recording companies against her ‘day job’ show. At the very worst, she could be sensing herself as being a hypocrite, charged with the responsibility of nurturing talent show singing contestants into the possibility of them launching a music career, only to lose out on royalty earnings stolen from them by the likes of “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.”

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